Libertarian Party Again Polls Over 1,000,000 Votes for U.S. House

According to Greg Kaza, the Libertarian Party has again polled over 1,000,000 votes for its nominees for U.S. House across the nation. The party also did this in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2008, and 2010. The Libertarian Party is the only party to have polled over 1,000,000 votes for U.S. House, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, since the Progressive Party last did it in 1914.

Although the 2012 election returns are still only 90% counted, the Libertarian total is approximately 1,200,000 for U.S. House. It is somewhat surprising that the party did so well, since this year, for the first time since 1978, it had no nominees on the California ballot for Congress, due to California’s top-two primary system.

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Libertarian Party Again Polls Over 1,000,000 Votes for U.S. House — 8 Comments

I would think that this year has to be on track to be the best total vote showing for Libertarians in partisan races ever.

Add to the 1.2 million in U.S. House races another 8+ million in the Presidential and six other statewide races from Georgia and Texas and the LP will be near 10 million votes in partisan races. That’s before anyone starts adding up the Senate, Gubernatorial, state legislative and local contests.

Roughly one percent of the popular vote, worth about 4 seats in Congress under a fair voting method. For comparison, Gary Johnson got very roughly the same percentage for President. Even under any of the reasonably fair single-winner methods, what’s that worth?

The 1,200,000 votes for Congress reflects candidates in around 150+ districts, vs the nation-wide total of around 1,200,000 votes for President.

It is clear that people are more willing to vote for a Libertarian or other alternative party candidate for Congress (or state legislature) than they are for a third party candidate for President, even when we have a candidate as qualified as Gov. Gary Johnson.

many of those congressional and other downticket votes would never have gone LP but for Johnson’s race and/or past LP presidential races. Indeed, but for those races, many of these candidates would have never been in the LP to start with, much less running.

Some people are drawn to the LP by the presidential ticket but don’t vote LP for president due to “wasted vote/lesser evil” fear based miscalculation. But they do then vote LP downticket. Whereas, if they hadn’t discovered the LP thanks to the presidential candidate, they wouldn’t be voting for any LP candidates at all.